The Night in Question, a guest post at the Pepperdine Scotland theater company blog

Pepperdine Scotland is a company in our theater department, and they are producing an original play for debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer. Irish playwright Lynda Radley is developing an intense, complex story of sexual assault on American college campuses, with production and direction from Alex Fthenakis and Cathy Thomas-Grant. I have had the singular opportunity to serve as a consultant for the play and to share time with the cast and crew.

Stepping out of our clinics and law schools to participate with other  disciplines in other departments can yield invigorating results. Consulting on the play has made me think more deeply about narrative structure and storytelling.  Thinking about this play and this story has reminded me that these issues and relationships always exceed the bounds of legal definitions and invoke cultures, structures, societies, and deep histories. Working with creative artists, writers, and students reminds me that we can always have more and different ways to do our work. To see a production take flight from scratch inspires me to create and gives me courage to take on new endeavors with faith that we can speak to the world.    

The Interference will be a powerful, important work. I can't wait to see it next year at Pepperdine.

I have the honor of contributing this guest post to the company blog, and I'm very proud to play even a small part in this production.

An excerpt:

I am grateful and proud to contribute some ideas for The Interference this year. Lynda Radley, Alex Fthenakis, Cathy Thomas-Grant, and the Pepperdine crew and cast are undertaking a critical and hard project. The night in question will always matter: the facts, the tick-tock, the actions. But the night in question only really matters in the context of the lives and communities in question. 

 

The Interference is an ambitious attempt to explore the hyper-local relationship, on the night in question, between the young man who wants possession of the young woman’s body and the young woman who loses possession of her body to him. It is even more ambitious to explore the lives in question all around them, the life of the university, the life of fraternities, the life of friends, the life of the team and its fans, the life of the law, the life of the family.